


an endless road to rediscover

by copacet



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:10:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copacet/pseuds/copacet
Summary: Twice Thor spent the night in a room with his brother, several years apart: the night before he thought he would become king, and the night after he actually did.





	an endless road to rediscover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naughty_sock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naughty_sock/gifts).



Tomorrow, Thor was going be king. The thought was as intoxicating as the mead he’d been drinking for the past several hours. Odin had been hinting for some time now that he thought Thor was ready to ascend to the throne, and yet he could still hardly believe that the time had finally come.

The feast had lasted for hours, and by now the steady stream of Asgardians passing by their table to congratulate Thor on his impending coronation had dried out. Volstagg, who had been matching Thor for each mug of mead, was starting to make noises about going home with Hildegund and their children, who had been allowed to stay much past their usual bedtime for the occasion. Fandral had also been drinking with them, until his attention had been caught by an attractive young women; they’d danced once and then disappeared together from the hall. Sif, who had been loudly telling tales of some of their past adventures, was starting to grow less animated as the hours wore on. Even Hogun, who typically drank less than the others and rarely appeared affected by it, by now had a tell-tale ruddiness to his cheeks and barely-detectable slurring of his words.

All in all, Thor decided, it had been a successful celebration.

“Come, brother,” said the final member of their table after Volstagg had said his goodbyes. Loki had been drinking quietly all night, remaining silent as the others at the table grew increasingly boisterous. “You have a big day tomorrow. You should get some rest.” He stood, reaching out an arm to pull Thor up with him.

Thor laughed. “Are you my mother or my brother?” Though now that he was standing, the floor did seem a bit unstable under his feet. Thor had never had any trouble recovering quickly from a night of mead and ale. Tonight, however, he’d perhaps drank even more than usual, out of—not nervousness, of course, but _anticipation_ for the next day. Waving an unsteady goodbye to Sif and Hogun, he allowed Loki to pull him from the hall.

Arm slung across Loki’s shoulders, Thor stumbled along beside his brother until they came to a halt outside Loki’s door. Loki slipped out from under his grasp, opening the door, then gripped Thor by the arm and led him inside. It seemed a little strange that Loki would bring Thor here rather than to his own quarters, which were only a few halls away. Loki had always been a private person, more likely to show up in Thor’s room than to allow Thor’s intrusion into his own. Tired and unsteady on his feet, Thor was grateful for the uncharacteristic gesture.

Perhaps Loki was feeling nostalgic for their younger days, when they’d shared quarters and had no more responsibilities than the lessons they were going to distract each other from anyways. Everything was going to change tomorrow - in a good way, in the _best_ way, but perhaps Loki was feeling uncertain about his place.

Or perhaps he just wanted to do something nice for his brother. Stranger things had happened.

A wave of fondness washed over Thor. Leaning against the wall and steadying himself with one hand, he turned to Loki, who was watching him with an inscrutable expression. “You’re a good brother,” he declared. “I can always count on you. I know you’ll aid me well once I am king.”

Loki turned away from him. “Honestly, Thor,” he snapped. “You’ve drunk too much. Lie down, why don’t you?”

Thor took a step towards him, then stopped as the room spun. Perhaps Loki had been right; lying down seemed suddenly to be a wonderful idea. Sitting down atop Loki’s bed, Thor fumbled to get his boots off, tossed them across the room, then flopped backwards until he was staring at the ceiling.

Loki’s face appeared in his field of vision as he knelt over him, straddling Thor’s legs.

Thor blinked dizzily up at him. Loki’s features were taut; his mouth a thin line as he stared down at Thor. Thor lifted himself up on his elbows, concern cutting through the haze of the alcohol.

“You need not worry, brother,” said Thor. “Nothing will change between us when I am king,”

Loki’s mouth twisted and his eyes flashed with something unreadable. “No,” he said. “I suppose it won’t.” There was a strange bitterness to his tone.

His head bent towards Thor’s, as if to press their foreheads together, and then he paused with their faces just a few inches apart and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. The oddity of his brother’s behavior hit Thor with a visceral suddenness, and he found his heart racing as he stared at Loki’s eyes, so close above Thor’s own, at Loki’s mouth, so eternally expressive...

And then Loki swore under his breath and pushed himself off to the side, landing on his back on the bed beside Thor. Allowing his head to sink back into the pillows, Thor relaxed, adrenaline dissipating. Whatever that odd moment had been, it was over now. He made a mental note to think on it more later, when he was less drunk and less tired, and then, closing his eyes, fell asleep immediately.

* * *

Thor woke in the early hours of the morning to find that Loki had rolled towards him in his sleep, fingers tangled in Thor’s shirt and head pressed against Thor’s shoulder. Whatever alcohol-induced mood had taken hold of him the previous night was no longer visible in his features, dimly lit by the early morning light. That was well. It would not do to have Loki in a huff on this day, of all days. Content, Thor closed his eyes and fell once again asleep.

When he woke again a few hours later, Loki was gone.

* * *

 “I’m here.”

Thor crossed the room, wrapping his arms around his brother. Loki was alive, unharmed, and most importantly, he was, well, _here_ . Thor had known that if anyone could find their way off of Asgard despite Surtar’s destruction, it would be Loki, but he’d had no expectations as to whether his brother would deign to let _Thor_ know he’d survived.

And yet here he was. In the flesh, this time, the minute rise and fall of his breathing perceptible against the hand Thor was pressing to the small of his back. No tricks or projections.

Though Loki had all but invited the embrace a moment before, he tensed under Thor’s arms, body stiff and hands resolutely at his sides. But Thor wasn’t one to give up easily; he held on, resting his chin atop Loki’s shoulder.

And then, finally, Loki relaxed. His hands came up to rest against Thor’s back and he turned his face towards Thor’s neck, breath warm but jagged against Thor’s skin.

Thor closed his eyes. He had lost a great many things, today, but at least he had this. At least he had his brother, frustrating and mischievous and still the person Thor loved best in the Nine Realms.

Eventually, Loki shoved him away, stepping back and ducking his head to avoid Thor’s gaze. “Are you done with the emotional displays, or are you going to start crying?” Loki asked, even though of the two of them, Thor was fairly certain that _he_ was not the one whose eyes had gone red and glassy at some point over the last two minutes.

Making what he considered a heroic decision not to point that out, Thor grinned. “I’m done,” he replied. “Ready to go see our people?”

* * *

Loki, predictably, had not been ready to go see their people, at least until both he and Thor had tidied up their appearances, Thor’s earlier attempt at wiping himself and his armor down with a cloth he’d found in the room being apparently insufficient. “You’re the king now,” he had said, as if Thor might possibly have overlooked that fact. “There are _standards_.”

Thor had rather thought that the other Asgardians were unlikely to mind, considering that he’d dirtied himself up defending them from a homicidal goddess and her horde of undead followers, and also that most of them were still covered in sweat and muck and the blood of their own undead enemies. Regardless, he’d allowed Loki to fuss over the alignment of his armor and the edges of his cloak.

Now he walked among his people—there was only so long that a person could sit in a chair looking out into space while occasionally awkwardly twisting around to look and wave at the rest of the room—trying to balance an appropriate kinglike projection of dignity with his mild discomfort at the way every conversation fell into a hush as he approached, Asgardians bowing their heads or even dropping to their knees as he walked up to them. Even as the crown prince, they’d never responded to him quite like that.

Odin had never really been one to walk among the commoners. Of course, Thor wasn’t Odin. But he couldn’t help questioning whether his attempts at mingling with the survivors were reassuring them, as he hoped, or simply making them uncomfortable.

He wondered if it would be unkingly to track down Valkyrie, who had slipped out of the room earlier, and help her sample the alcohol she’d surely managed to locate. Probably so.

The sound of laughter from the corner of the room caught his attention, and he turned to see Loki—who somewhat surprisingly had _not_ left early—holding forth to a small crowd, his gestures visible across the room. Thor wondered briefly if he should be keeping a closer eye on him, but decided against it. If he was going to rely on Loki, he needed to be able to trust that Loki wouldn’t get up to anything worse than minor mischief, and any attempt at constant supervision would only annoy them both while taking away the opportunity for Loki to continue to prove himself.

Loki turned his head slightly, catching Thor’s eye, and seemed to pause for a moment before turning away again and continuing to address his apparently rapt audience. Realizing he’d been caught staring, Thor too turned quickly away. By now, the crowd was thinning out, a steady trickle of Asgardians slipping away to private spaces to be alone with their families or their grief. Deciding that there was nothing more he could do by staying, Thor followed them. He nodded to each person as he passed them in the hallways, then nodded awkwardly again in recognition of the bows and curtsies he received in return. As he walked, he was uncomfortably aware of the missing weight of his hammer in his hand.

His empty room, when he reached it, was a relief. He wondered if it was embarrassingly early in the evening to simply go to sleep, then realized both that he had no idea what time it was relative to Sakaar or Asgard, and also that he didn’t care.

Thor was only part way through taking off his armor when the door—which he was quite certain that he’d locked—slid open and Loki slipped into the room.

He eyed Thor and asked, “Tired from all the adulation?” in a tone Thor judged to be teasing rather than genuinely bitter.

“Are you?” he responded, continuing to strip off his armor. “You seemed to have gathered some admirers.”

Loki preened. “Of course I did. _Some_ of our people have good taste in their heroes.”

Thor snorted. It occurred to him that he didn’t actually have any sleep clothes, or any clothes at all other what he was wearing. Yet another issue, multiplied by thousands for each of the survivors, he’d have to deal with tomorrow. “Oh, you keep telling yourself that.” Unclad down to his underclothes, he threw himself onto the bed.

The mattress was soft, far more comfortable than those on any other spaceship Thor had encountered. He tried not to think too hard about what the Grandmaster might have used it for.

“I’ll have you know,” said Loki, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “that the people are _very grateful_ to me for saving them.”

Shifting to the other side of the bed, Thor sat up against the headboard. “I’m certain they are,” he said, dropping the sarcasm. _I certainly am._

Loki opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if caught of guard by the lack of rejoinder. “Yes, well,” he said after a moment. “They should be.” He looked at Thor. When Thor looked back at him, saying nothing, he swung his legs up onto the bed, then after only a moment’s hesitation, stretched out and draped himself against Thor’s side, laying his head against Thor’s shoulder as casually as if the last several years had never happened.

Caught off guard, Thor shifted, pulling away automatically and twisting until he could see Loki’s face. Loki too pulled back, but he was giving Thor a searching look, expression uncharacteristically hesitant.

 _Satisfaction is not in my nature_ Loki had once told him. And perhaps that was true, but here, now, he seemed...settled. Not entirely relaxed, but lacking the tautness in his features and the desperation in his eyes that Thor had seen during most of their interactions over the last several years.

And for once, Thor knew what his brother wanted. “Oh,” he said.

 _Are we really going to do this_ , he wondered but didn’t say, worried that speaking what had always been unspoken might spook Loki into fleeing once more rather than facing it.

Hmm. “Are we really going to do this?” Thor asked. An intoxicating feeling, trust—he hoped he would have a long time to get used to it.

Loki froze, and surprise flashed over his features before being replaced with a look Thor had become familiar with over the centuries, the one he had always gotten when they were on an adventure together and he was about to try to convince Thor that everything happening had been part of his plan. “Well,” he said, recovering quickly, “ _I_ was trying to be subtle, but if direct discussion is what it’s going to take to get it through your skull—”

Thor seized his brother and kissed him.

Loki responded immediately, gripping the back of Thor’s neck and pulling him closer, pressing their bodies together. When Thor finally pulled back to catch his breath, Loki pressed his cool lips to the side of Thor's neck and began mouthing down towards his shoulder; Thor slipped his hand under the layers of Loki’s clothing and scraped his fingernails along Loki’s back, causing him to arch; they tumbled down onto the mattress and tangled together until Thor could no longer tell where he ended and his brother began.

* * *

Afterward, they lay next to one another, arms and legs bumping comfortably together. Thor shifted onto his side and slipped a hand up onto the small of Loki’s back to draw him closer

With his brother in his arms, Thor drifted into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Meanwhile, halfway across the universe, Thanos slipped on a space banana peel, broke his neck, and died. Everyone else lived happily ever after. THE END.


End file.
